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As with all methods of participating in democracy, BDS can be done in ways that produce more justice, more peace, and more democracy--or it can do the opposite. Like a hammer, BDS can build or it can be a weapon hurting people.
Boycotting goods or services is an age-old method of participating in democracy--economic democracy and political democracy. Not buying something is an individual freedom in virtually all societies. Certainly there are a few things you must purchase in order to engage in some activities; when I wanted to gather wild rice on public lakes in northern Wisconsin I needed to purchase a ricing permit, and without one the costs and consequences would have been pricey.
But deciding that I don't want to buy a Nestles candy bar is my choice, with the only consequences being fewer cavities, more money in my pocket, and, as it happened for several years, a chance to impose a tiny cost on a company that was using shady scam practices in some impoverished countries--having people with no medical background dress as nurses and convincing poor people to spend their scant resources on Nestles powdered baby formula, rather than breastfeed their babies.
Infact, an activist organization now called Corporate Accountability, launched the boycott[1] in 1977 and by 1984 we the people of the world who had been participating in that boycott won--a first on earth of a campaign forcing a globalized corporation to take serious policy reform based on action (or targeted inaction) of masses of consumers.
Divestment simply means no purchase of any share of ownership in corporations that contribute in any way to harmful practice. Divesting from corporations doing business in apartheid South Africa put a great deal of pressure on the racist regime and contributed to the political decision to create a democracy there. Divestment in mining corporations that were doing great harm to mountains in the Southeastern US helped drive changes[2] in some environmental practices when financial institutions decided to stop loaning to some of the worst environmental actors because people were divesting from those banks to help drive those changes. Barclays, Wells Fargo, and other financial institutions all were financing bad environmental actors and all were targeted effectively and withdrew that financing.
Sanctions are normally a governmental practice meant to punish bad actors--when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014, the Obama administration imposed sanctions, as did the Biden administration when Russia did it again years later. Iran is building nuclear weapons components and they supply Hamas, Hezbollah, and Houthis with weapons, so the US has been sanctioning Iran for years. The citizen input can be to engage in pressure on elected officials to sanction bad practices--pressure on the US government to sanction Israel over Palestinian civilian deaths has been less successful, but the success in many cases is proportional to the number of citizens making that demand.
BDS is often referred to as the trifecta of economic measures available to promote or protect democracy. Anyone can participate at some level in one or more of these practices.
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